What Factors Influence Healthy Longevity? New Study Explores Answers

Some people suggest that 100 is the new 80 and that longevity means that people need to be looking forward to living a longer period in retirement. There are challenges associated with this, however, if you do not have appropriate long-term care plans put in place.

Living longer is only one piece of the puzzle, but you must have appropriate protections in the event that something were to happen to you, such as becoming incapacitated or suffering in an accident or a suddenly disabling event that would require you to visit a nursing home.

Statistically, life expectancy in the United States is around 80 years, but many people are living in their 80s and 90s, making it a perfectly realistic expectation. There are even centenarians or people who are 100 years old or more and the number of these people is on the rise. Longevity researchers are currently exploring what people who live to be very old age have in common but are also going one step beyond of figuring out what is similar with people who age very well.

For example, if you want to live to an exceptionally good age, there is a good chance that you want to do so in the best health possible. An ongoing clinical trial at the North Western University known as the Super Aging Study; looks at people who are older than age 80, but still have the memory of a person in their 50s.

Exceptionally good health and exceptionally old age for that age range go hand in hand for the body and the brain. The trial is comparing the brains of average agers, people whose memory and overall health align with their age and compares them to the brains of super agers. Super agers tend to have brains that look more like 50-year-olds rather than average 80-year-olds.

Other studies indicate that a slower biological fact may be partly to thank. In a study that compared older adults between the ages of 95 and 112 with younger adults, many of the people who lived exceptionally long developed age-related illnesses up to 24 years after the average age of developing these conditions. This means that some people live longer and live healthier but having an appropriate long-term care plan in place will give you great deal of protection and support.